


cough drops

by Notfye



Category: Alice by Heart - Sheik/Sater/Sater & Nelson
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Pre-Relationship, Sick Character, Sickfic, somewhere between touchy friendship and actual romance, this is literally me projecting about my hs for like 1.5k
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:09:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29835117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notfye/pseuds/Notfye
Summary: Winter’s hard.
Relationships: Alfred Hallam/Alice Spencer
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	cough drops

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Friday! I started this back in July and forced myself to finish it this week, mostly because I'm sick of it sitting 3/4ths of the way done in my WIP folder. 
> 
> Anyway! Enjoy!

Winter’s hard.

Not for Alice, specifically. She doesn’t have to shovel and doesn’t mind the weather. Winter’s pretty good, actually, as long as there are enough blankets and sweaters to go around. 

For Alfred, though, it’s hard. She  _ knows _ it’s hard for him because every year, the minute the temperatures start dropping, he catches cold after cold until springtime comes. He carries boxes of tissues with him to class, has bags of cough drops stowed in his backpack. His nose turns red and his eyes glassy, and every once in a while Alice thinks he might actually be dying. 

So when he comes in, slouched over with bruised eyes and a cough in tow, it’s not exactly a surprise. 

“You look a bit rough,” Alice says. 

He sniffles in reply. “It’s another cold, I think.”

“Do you have a fever?” 

“Not yet,” he says, and manages a small smile. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I always worry about you.” 

“And I, you.” He tugs his history textbook out of his locker. “You know, if I stayed home whenever I was sick, I’d never come to school.”

It’s true. Alice winces in sympathy. 

“Maybe go take a nap in the nurse’s office later?” she suggests. 

“I can’t. I have a physics test and she might send me home.”

Damn eighth period. She never thought it was fair when upperclassmen got a class at the end of the day. Seniors could leave campus as they pleased, but it was really only a perk if you didn’t have a class to bring you back.

“She probably wouldn’t let you drive yourself home, anyway.”

“Library nap it is.” He says it with a grimly determined smile. 

Before first period they go to the cafeteria to buy styrofoam cups of tea. Alice gets Earl Grey and Alfred gets the awful kind that’s supposed to help his throat. It smells like licorice and tastes worse: she’s only had to drink it a few times, and even then made it scalding hot with too much honey, in an attempt to cover up as much of the taste as possible. 

She watches as he drinks it black and doesn’t seem to react to the taste at all. 

As the day goes on he does seem to perk up, though. By lunch he’s talking to everyone in their little group, and certainly no one who didn’t know to look for it would know that he’s sick—beyond, anyway, the constant state of almost-ill he seems to live in. There’s an argument about What Is Romanticism, Really (Alice swears it’s the closest she’s ever seen Tabatha to getting in a fight with someone, because, “ ‘Not to me not if it’s you’ isn’t fucking  _ Romanticism, _ Dodgy.”)

Eighth period comes and goes, Alfred tells Alice that he thinks he did well on his physics test, and Alice practically forgets how awful he looked this morning. 

The next day he still looks pretty bad, but during lunch they drive to Starbucks and while he seems a little beaten down, it’s not too bad. Only like he didn’t get enough sleep the night before or something. 

Alfred is a chronic liar about these things, but by the end of the week it really does seem like he hasn’t gotten any worse. At least it’s not like the time a few years ago, when he insisted he was fine when he had strep throat. Alice had found him alone, in a bathroom, holding a wet paper towel to his face. He’d been crying. 

After school they go to the mall and wander around for a few hours, browsing through the bookstore and eating too much garbage. They go see a terrible movie, and snicker together in the back row until they’re certain that the entire theater hates them. At the end, Alfred drives her home, and they sit in the driveway for a few minutes before she makes a move to go in. 

“Text me if you get worse?” Alice says. 

“I will.” He won’t. 

She squeezes his hand and gets out of the car. 

On Monday, Alice knows he’s made it to school, not because he says hello to her, but because she can hear him coughing as soon as he comes in, all the way from the senior lounge. 

“Maybe you should go to the doctor,” Alice says, by way of greeting. 

“Maybe,” Alfred says, which means he must be feeling really terrible. He never says anything that  _ might  _ betray that he knows he’s ill, much less a maybe. 

“Alfred—“

“I’m fine. Really.” He smiles at her, weakly, and she can see how the bags under his eyes have grown, how a flush has settled high on his cheeks. 

“Come on,” she starts, whiny, ready to tear into him about how he  _ must  _ be feverish and how he shouldn’t have come in today at all, but then he starts coughing. It's awful, the sort of thing that she’d only imagine in conjunction with 19th century novels, where everyone dies of consumption. So instead, she just rubs his back and waits for it to be over. 

“Alfred,” she says again, when it’s ended. 

He takes a long drink from his water bottle. “I’ll go if I’m still sick at the end of the week, alright? It’s bronchitis. They don’t give you anything for that, anyway.” It comes out tight, like he doesn’t want to be having this particular conversation anymore. 

Alice drops it. 

Tuesday is all but the same, except now they don’t talk about the elephant in the room. It’s almost like a fight, there’s that edginess to it, but Alice can’t bear to call it that or commit in the same way. He’s too sick. 

That morning they sit next to each other in history, where their teacher lectures much too quickly, and one moment's distraction could leave you missing a whole decade. Alice does her best to keep up and always leaves class with an aching hand; Alfred manages with the best of them even in such a state. 

She thinks of an article she read a few weeks ago, one she meant to show to Alfred. The first line was, “Most rabbits have, in their skill set, the ability to pretend that they’re healthy even when they’re quite sick.” 

She looks sidelong at him. He’s hardly holding himself up but is still writing line after line of notes. She hears him cough, ugly and ragged, but the scratch of his pencil never stops. 

Rabbit indeed. 

Alfred sends her a picture of his hospital bracelet just after noon on Thursday, and Alice could scream. She won’t, not with the way her heart has swelled and settled in her throat, but the impulse is there. 

_ Are you ok???  _ she types back. 

_ I have pneumonia. It’s bad.  _ comes the reply, followed by  _ but I’ll live _ , a half-second later. 

_ What happened?  _ Alice asks, by which she means,  _ I know you’d never go there without the threat of imminent death.  _

_ I woke up last night and I couldn’t breathe. It wasn't particularly pleasant.  _

She sits down in math. Class is about to start, she has maybe two minutes to keep texting. 

_ Can I visit?  _ she asks. 

He types for a long time. Then:  _ Come by after school. Room 241.  _

Alice wanders into the hospital just as the sun is beginning to slant orange-gold through the windows. She hates it here, with all it’s suffering and largeness and the way doctors are so cavalier and black-humored about death. She very nearly clings to her backpack, and then starts walking down hallways, determined to find the way without help. 

After fifteen minutes of wandering, she does, and it’s some comfort that there’s a great deal of hacking from every door but this one. She opens it slowly; Alfred’s mom is sitting in a chair next to the bed, but stands up when Alice comes in. 

“Hi, Mrs. Hallam,” she says. “I brought some of Alfred’s school stuff with me. I don’t think anyone expects him to do any of it, though.” She tries to smile, but it’s heavy, feels thin and wan. 

She rises, “Thanks, Alice. I’m sure Alfred’s glad to see a friend, too.”

She crosses to the bed, where she pushes back Alfred’s bangs, kisses his forehead, and slips out of the room. Alice is still halfway between the door and the bed. The truth is, she’s never really seen Alfred this bad before. Sure, he’s been laid up in bed, but this is different. He has an IV. 

“How do you feel?” she asks quietly. 

“Like shit.” He looks like he wants her to laugh, so she does, and it chips away at the chill of the room. “I’m glad you’re here, though.”

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she doesn’t mean for it, but it comes out sort of raw, and she surprises herself by thinking that she might cry. 

“Me too,” Alfred says. He moves over on the bed, it seems with great effort, and Alice takes that as her cue to curl up beside him. 

“Please never land yourself in the hospital again, Alfred,” she says after she’s settled, holding one of his hands. “Please just take care of yourself. I don’t want to worry about you all the time.” 

“Alright,” he says, low, nearly a whisper. 

She runs her thumb over the back of his hand. 

“I wouldn’t be able to take it if you died in your sleep because you insisted this was just a cough, or that meningitis was just fatigue.” She looks up at him. “Do you know that?”

He shakes his head, ever so slightly. 

“It’s true. What would you do if something happened to me?”

“I don’t want to think about that.” 

“I don’t want to think about it, either.” She moves closer to him and he tilts his head so that she can tuck hers against his shoulder. They fall into silence, that lovely kind, and even in these circumstances, there’s something peaceful in just rubbing patterns across the back of his hand. His breath is still ragged, he has to turn to cough away from her every few minutes, but it is not exactly as bad as she had feared.

“Hey, Alice,” he says, very softly. She’d thought he’d fallen asleep. 

“Hey,” she replies, with the same quiet tone. 

“Thanks for coming.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> research was too hard and pneumonia isn’t something I’m super versed in, yes I know he probably wouldn’t be hospitalized after, like, two weeks, please let me live
> 
> (The article that Alice references, by the way, is real, and ran in the New Yorker over the summer. Here’s the link: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/the-rabbit-outbreak/amp)
> 
> anyway, ordinarily this is where I tell people to bother me on tumblr, but I gave up tumblr for lent, so bother me here instead! I'll see you all over at Notfye again on Easter (and on Sundays until then!)


End file.
